Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Bolt Action: WIPs and Future Plans

Before going onto what I plan to do, I'll start with the addition I've already made. I've built myself this Pak 38 anti-tank gun, from Artizan Designs.
I found it by chance in Sheffield. Warlord doesn’t currently make a 38 so this model
appeared to be my only option.

I've added the crew and gun to a 60mm base leftover from one
of my 40k projects. The few were all one piece models, so apart from a few mould-lines
they turned out good. I blended the crews bases into the 60mm one with Milliput.

The gun however was a nightmare. The wheels were horribly miscast.
What I thought was a lot of flash turned out to be missing sections of wheels. I
fixed the missing sections with Milliput. The frame was also a pain, as the gun
shield bent the wheels out, meaning I had to glue them further apart. I'm glad I
only want the one gun, and I only had to make this once.

Now, onto my future plans. Thanks to the great value and reliability
at Putrid Painting, I will soon be receiving a box set of German pioneers and a
French Renault R35. My plans for the pioneers are simple: I'll make one or two
units of pioneers, a unit of Heer infantry/veterans, and make some teams from
the remnants, mainly an anti-tank rifle team, an mmg team and a Goliath tracked
mine team.

The fate of the R35 is a little more complex. I intend to
turn it into the Panzerjäger
R35: a German variant of the normal Panzerjäger,
which mounted a Czech 47mm anti-tank gun (similar to the pak 38) onto the
chassis of the French R35 in a fixed superstructure, making a small mobile tank
hunter. The mobility will be very handy, and its long range means I can keep
its weak armour far from the enemy's own guns. In game it will be a true
hunter, hiding in the trees and sniping tanks from cover, covering my forward units
as they advance. It’s a nice addition to the arm, and has a low points cost, which
means more points for other fun toys. I plan to make the model swappable, so if I wanted to I could use it as a regular looted R35.